Sometimes You Can't Make It Own Your Own

I became a fan of U2 in the Summer of 1988. Over a year after it came out, on a whim I bought The Joshua Tree, since it had produced three big hits. It was all part of my 15 cassettes for 1 cent or whatever the deal was for a Columbia Record and Tape Club membership at the time. I, of course, knew U2’s major hits at the time but had never been particularly enthused by then. It all changed when I listened to my new The Joshua Tree tape. I was hooked, and by that fall, when Rattle and Hum came out, U2 was my favorite band, which is where they have remained in the 21 years since then.

So, it was with excitement that finally, this past Sunday, I got to see them in concert. They kicked off the American leg of their 360º tour in Soldier Field in Chicago Saturday night. I couldn’t make it that night, but my wife and I made it to show number two in the same venue the next night. If you want to read my standard concert review of the show, it’s available here on tunesmate.com. For the purposes of this blog, I want to examine another aspect of the concert.

In particular, I found the makeup of the U2 audience interesting. When I was in high school in the late 1980s, I remember once a friend of mine wishing for a big concert to come to our area. It was a pipe dream and we all knew it, but we still found ourselves pondering it. He was thinking of the likes of Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, etc. Then, he looked at me and said something to the effect of “If it were up to you, though, we’d probably get something like U2.” It wasn’t meant to be approving of the choice, and it reflected, I think, some of the identity of U2 amid the hard rock trends of the late 1980s. That identity was furthered reflected a couple years later when, during my freshman year of college, a few guys in my dorm got into a war of words on one guy’s door that reached the level that the resident advisor had to step in. The one pair of guys might have been categorized as the “frat boy” style, while the other pair might have been categorized as part of the alternative scene. Among other things, at one point the frat boy pair wrote something on the other pair’s door disparaging them for their “U2 mushroom music.” In other words, for as big a draw as U2 had been during the period of The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum, the band wasn’t completely considered the kind of mainstream, stadium-busting rock that would appeal to the popular partying crowd.

The crowd on Sunday seems to have signaled that that has changed. In many ways, U2 seems to be what the Who, the Rolling Stones, the Eagles, and so on have been—one of the all-time most famous bands who have at times been considered edgy and who can sell out and rock out stadiums of 50,000-70,000 people. In many ways, given their age, their career paths, and their appeals, U2’s latest tour reminds me of the Steel Wheels tour that the Rolling Stones undertook in 1989-1990. Many in the crowd seemed to be there to drink a lot, rock out to music, and just have a good party.

While to a large extent, that’s par for the course on a stadium tour like this, this makeup of the crowd seems to become an issue of particular significance when we examine what might be called the “political” aspect of U2. While driving home from the concert, I heard a DJ on WGN radio out of Chicago talk about how he would have liked more humor and less politics at the shows this weekend, but that he was okay with the politics that U2 interjected, because that was U2; it’s part of their identity. This particularly caught my ear because I wanted them to include more politics into the performance, though I realized full well why they might not have done so. It also got me wondering how effective the political aspects of U2’s performance were.

At one point, the audience was asked to wear masks or hold up pictures of Aung San Suu Kyi, who was elected democratic leader of Burma in 1990 but was immediately overthrown by a military junta and has been under house arrest for the better part of the two decades since. The band played the song “Walk On,” which was written about her, and volunteers wearing masks surrounded the stage. Before the concert, ushers had masks available, so I had one that I had gotten then, and I held mine up throughout the song. Yet, I was clearly in the minority. I noticed one other person in my entire section wearing the mask, a few people in the next section holding them up, and a few others here and there. In fact, even though Bono had just explained who Suu Kyi was, the guy in front of my wife and I turned to my wife to ask who the picture I was holding up was.

Other aspects of the concert linked to political issues, including a message from Desmond Tutu on the big screen leading into the band playing “One” and, toward the end of the concert, Bono offering information about the amount of money that had been raised for AIDS relief in Africa. The themes of these “political moments” tended to be an emphasis on human rights, democracy, and freedom, along with a sentiment, as reflected in the song title “One” and Tutu’s speech before it, that we are all one world, needing to work together. Politically speaking, it was all pretty general stuff. I mean, this wasn’t Bono asking us to support a specific plan for national health care or a view on abortion or something else that might divide the audience in a much readier way. Yet, it is, as the WGN show host’s comments indicate, stuff that’s considered “political” (and, thus, something that is, by that perspective, to be distinguished from “entertainment,” “humor,” and any number of other categories that could be applied to the performance).

And, to some degree, I would assume U2’s efforts have some effect. My wife and I learned more about Suu Kyi during the performance. I’m sure others in the audience did as well. Yet, if the crowd participation during “Walk On” is any indication, that effect was rather limited. On the whole, it’s a rather privileged audience that went to this concert. Tickets were by no means cheap, the price of parking was pretty high, tee-shirts at the concert were $40 a pop, and that’s not even including all of the ancillary expenses that come with making the trip (and given the limited venues that the tour is playing, I’m sure many folks like me were and will be making four, five, six, or more hour trips to see a show on the tour). So, the political messages that U2 offers have potential to reach an audience that might have some money or resources to contribute to the causes of human rights, democracy, and freedom that U2 is espousing. Yet, to what degree is that limited by the audience’s motivation to care? Many of the folks didn’t seem to take particular interest in these aspects of the concert, preferring instead to take this time to get their next beer and wait for the next rocking song to which they could pump their fists and dance. Or they preferred, like the guy on WGN, to view these elements of the concert as a metaphorical mosquito—not a huge annoyance that keeps you from hanging out but just enough of an annoyance that you vocalize your displeasure. Meanwhile, for those of us who did take interest in these parts of the concert, to at least some degree, U2 was already preaching to the choir.

In the end, then, I think that generally U2’s messages about human rights, freedom, and democracy are on the whole good for the world. At the very least, my wife and I learned something important. At how many other concerts can one say that? Yet, like so many instances involving the confluence of politics and popular music, we need to recognize the limitations of the stadium rock concert as a forum for political discourse. And, perhaps, as part of that, there’s a need for voices that push society to reconsider how it thinks about that confluence. Should it be such an annoyance, and if so, toward what political ends does that sentiment serve? And, if one does listen to what U2 says, where does one go from there? Does one simply think about it, only to put it aside after the drive home, or does one donate money or time to a cause or talk about it with others after the concert? Does one take other actions?

On the back of my Aung San Suu Kyi mask, I’m offered some suggestions for action to take. The mask lists a number of websites to visit to find out how to help, including this one for the United States, this one for Canada, and this one globally. The wording in a circle on the side reads “Wear to work or college, when you’re at home drinking a cup of tea… especially to be worn at U2 shows when the band plays Walk On.” These are contextualized by the bolded quotation from Suu Kyi: “Please use your liberty to promote ours.” So, U2 is asking the privileged audience to act beyond just listening at the concert. Yet, the audience has to be motivated to even care to act in the first place. And that is where I’m concerned that things might be lacking, particularly with the current audience that U2’s tour is drawing. And it’s not that I don’t want U2 to draw this audience, nor that I think there’s no place for concerts to be about partying and listening to good music. After all, I did my fair share of dancing and singing at the show. It’s that I want that and I want more. I want a world where we can all have a good time and learn something about ourselves and other at the same time. Music seems to have that potential, but only if both sides (performer and audience) participate.